January 29, 2010 Should Your Kids Drink Their Veggies?
When you can’t get your kids to eat vegetables, it makes sense to encourage them to drink them instead. Right?
That’s what Juicy Juice wants you to believe. The Harvest Surprise website says:
“Harvest Surprise is loaded with fruits and veggies like grapes, carrots, passionfruit, sweet potatoes and apples to create 2 fun flavors kids will love.”
Giving your kids veggie-spiked fruit juice won’t give your kids any of the benefits of eating vegetables AND it will make teaching them to eat real vegetables even harder.
First the nutrition:
1) The carrot in Harvest Surprise Grape Juice doesn’t provide much of a nutritional boost (and this flavor contains no sweet potato). This drink is primarily not-so-great-for-you grape juice. It doesn’t even stack up well next to Juicy Juice’s own regular grape juice.
Look at this comparison (8 ounces each):
Calories:
- Harvest Surprise Grape: 120
- Juicy Juice Grape: 80
Sodium:
- Harvest Surprise Grape: 80mg
- Juicy Juice Grape: 20mg
Sugar:
- Harvest Surprise Grape: 27g
- Juicy Juice Grape: 20g
2) The only nutritional benefit of the veggie concoction is a modest amount of three things: Vitamin A, calcium and iron.
BUT…
- The calcium and iron don’t come from the carrot, they’re added.
- The Vitamin A in the juice is small potatoes compared to an actual carrot.
- 8 ounces Harvest Surprise Grape supplies 10% of your daily requirement whereas 1 carrot gives you more than 200%.
- The carrot contains fiber. The juice does not.
3) Your kids will have to drink 8 ounces of the juice to get the “benefits,” but most pediatricians and nutritionists recommend children drink no more than 4 ounces of juice per day.
Now the habits:
1) Vegetables (and I’m reluctant to lump them all together here because they’re all so different) have a unique set of tastes, texture, appearances and aromas. If you want your kids to eat (and like) vegetables, they have to be exposed to them repeatedly. Hiding them in juice doesn't accomplish this.
2) Most kids actually like real carrots so you don’t need to slip them into a drink to get them eat them. What's more, if your kids start associating carrots with a sweet slurp they'll reject the crunchy chew.
3) Giving your kids lots of juice, even if it were healthy juice, only fosters a juice-drinking (and eventually a soda-drinking) habit. Read more about juice.
4) If you give your kids something that passes for vegetables, how likely are you to work at getting your kids to eat actual vegetables? Not much.
If you want your children to drink their veggies, then give them vegetables soup.
1) There are plenty of good-for-you soups on the market, so you’ll be trading-up nutritionally.
Canned soups are notorious for being a huge source of sodium. But the Center for Science in the Public Interest recently reviewed brand name soups and found many to recommend. Look for products that are low sodium.
2) Giving kids vegetable soup teaches them to eat vegetables. Not only are there usually chunks of the real deal in the soup, but also, vegetable soup is thought of as food made from vegetables. And what your kids think really matters.
The added bonus is the research shows people find soup really satisfying to eat, and adding soup to a meal makes people less likely to overeat. That’s a habit to celebrate.
~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~
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Sources: http://www.juicyjuice.com/products/Harvest-Surprise.aspx, accessed January 28, 2010; Center for Science in the Public Interest. "The Souper Bowl: Competition for Soup Sales Heats Up." Nutrition Action Healthletter. January/February, 2010. pp. 13-15.
Reader Comments (4)
My four kids generally only drink 3 beverages: milk twice a day, water the rest of the time, and 100% juice (4 oz. serving) twice a week or so. My kids are normal body weight and we are not relying on the juice for nutrition since they eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies as part of their meals and snacks. But, sometimes, while the other kids at an event are slurping down gatorade or soda, you want to give your kids a "treat" and those are the times we use the 4 oz. juice boxes, generally apple or white grape juice.
I have read enough of your site to know your views on juice and I generally agree with them, as I said, we see the juice as an occassional treat, not a regular beverage. But, I was wondering what your opinion was of pure veggie juices, not those mixed with fruit juice. For example, my kids like 100% carrot juice and recently had and liked tomato juice. They actually like carrot juice better than most fruit juices. Note: they also do like to eat carrots, both raw and cooked.
So, what do you think of carrot juice, tomato juice, or something like V8? Thanks,
Stacey
http://feedingmytribe.wordpress.com
Stacey,
I like the way you handle juice - as a treat, not a staple. I give my own daughter juice the way you give it to your kids. As for vegetable juice...well, from a nutrition perspective they're OK. Not the commercial kinds like V8 which have a lot of sodium (so they get your kids' taste buds in the salt habit). Fresh pressed vegetable juice doesn't have the salt problem, so it's better. I'm not a big fan of juice as a staple though because it's better to chew solid foods, not drink them. Drinking juice won't help kids learn to eat vegetables. But I guess they're not too bad.
Thanks for your comment, and your readership!
Dina
Thanks for your prompt response, Dina. When I let them have the V8, it was the low-sodium kind. Mainly, they like carrot juice, which according to the bottle is 100% carrot juice with no sodium added. Since we don't drink a lot of juice, I can't really see investing in a juicer, so when we do have juice, it is the bottled kind. The one I get is the refrigerated carrot juice from Bolthouse Farms. It is not a replacement for whole fruits or veggies, more an occassional replacement for another beverage, either milk or water. Enjoy reading your site!
Stacey
Mom to 4 6-yr-olds
http://feedingmytribe.wordpress.com
Stacey,
It sounds like you have a smart, sound juice policy. Great.
Dina